Archive for May, 2009

On February 28th our friends Jay and Amy had a party to celebrate their son Holden’s second birthday. Although they live up in LA, Amy’s mother lives down here in San Diego, so they had the party at her house.

Here is a picture of Sophie and Holden together.

The theme for the party was “bugs”, and Sophie spent the whole day walking around with a plastic frog and lizard (Score – Tom Boy 1, Princess 0).

Courtney and Niki were there as well.

Our friend Denise was there as well.

Here is a picture of Debbie and Sophie with my friend Jenny. I was surprised to see her there since she lives up in Orange County now. We used to work together at HSBC a few years ago.

And, of course, I was there too.

While we generally don’t let Sophie have many sweets (at least until her first birthday), we decided it would be ok for her to cheat and have a bite of Holden’s cake.

On a separate note, Sophie received a neat birthday present from her Great Uncle Joe. He sent her a bracelet that used to belong to Sophie’s Great Grandmother Sophie, who she was named after. He also included a letter to Sophie documenting the bracelet’s origin and providing some interesting family history as well. Below are some pictures of Sophie modeling her present, which was then safely put away for a day in the future when she can truly appreciate it (and not just drool on it!).

When Sophie was born my brother Stephen’s wife Amy’s mother (I’m not really sure what that makes us. Mother-in-law-once-removed?) knitted her a cute little sweater with a matching bunny. It’s taken almost a year but Sophie finally fits in the sweater. Here are some pictures from a little modeling session we did.

Here’s a picture of Sophie at the library near our house hugging the big bear they have there.

On February 22nd, while my wife and daughter were off partying, I was off to see the Tour of California. This year the final stage of the tour was going to be in San Diego. More precisely, the starting line was in Rancho Bernardo and the finish line was in Escondido. My original plan was to just go to the finish line to watch the race, but I got an early start so I went to the start as well.

It was very interesting to be able to walk around see the teams close up. Most of the teams had their RV’s parked in lots near the starting line, and many of the riders were just riding around to warm up or signing autographs.

Of course, there was no sign of Lance Armstrong or the rest of his team.

Here’s a shot of the start of the race, a couple of hundred feet from the starting line. The group of four out in front are the leaders in each category (overall, young rider, points and king of the mountains).

After watching the start of the race fly by, I moved up to the finish line area in Escondido. Of course what was a 20 minute drive for me was almost four hours of riding out through the mountains, including up Mount Palomar.

Finally after standing around on the side of the road for a while, the first riders finally rolled into sight. The second rider in this picture is the one who would go on to win the stage that day.

Then a couple of minutes later the main group of riders arrived. The guy in the yellow jersey with Amgen on the sleeves is Levi Leipheimer, the eventual overall winner of the race.

Finally, the rest of the riders came through.

After the race, the winners got up on the stage and accepted their awards.

Overall, watching the race was a great experience. It was nice to be able to see the start and finish of the race. It was also interesting to be able to ride my bike down the same course that the professional riders had gone down minutes before.

Our friend Patty had a surprise birthday party for her husband Warren, and we were excited to finally get invited to a birthday party that wasn’t for a one year old! The party was at Dave and Busters, which, for those of you who have never been, is kind of like Chuck E Cheese for grown ups. They have video games, skee ball, pool tables, etc. as well as a full service restaurant and bar. So we got a baby sitter for Sophie and headed off for some grown-up fun!

Here is the guest of honor and his wife.

Here’s Warren’s birthday cake. It’s a cute idea, but I don’t know how he’s going to cut through his own face!

Blowing our the candles.

Warren ponders the implications of slicing up his infant self.

After dinner and cake, it was off to the arcade for a little fun.

As you can see, you could win “tickets” from many of the games. You could then exchange the tickets forjunk quality merchandise in the gift shop. We used ours to get Sophie a Cookie Monster doll.

It hasn’t stopped shedding blue fur all over our house to this day.

P.S. In the end Warren couldn’t bring himself to slice his baby self up.

On Valentine’s Day this year Sophie took her first steps without holding on to anything. As you can probably imagine, she could only manage two or three steps before falling over, but within a few days she was able to make it all the way across the room.

Here’s Sophie on Feb 8. She can take a few steps, but you’ll notice she’s still holding on to mama.

By Feb 20, she’s lurching across the room all by herself.

Here’s Sophie giving her dad a hug.

Here’s Sophie texting her friends to tell them she can walk now.

We are very excited that Sophie can walk now. Now if anyone can tell us how to get her to stop we would really appreciate it. We’re tired!

Back on February 15th (yes, I am aware that was almost two months ago. Sorry, blogging hasn’t been my top priority.) Sophie’s friend Lauren had a party for her first birthday. Most of the usual suspects were there.

Elizabeth and Nicholas

Shannon and Julia

Jean and Samantha

Here’s the birthday girl having her cake. There are no messy “after” pictures since she wasn’t too happy about the attention.

Sophie, Nicholas and Samantha playing together.

We attempted to get all of the kids together for a group photo, but the meltdowns began about 30 seconds in and we never got a final picture. This is the best we got.

After Lauren’s party we went over to Patty and Warren’s house for dinner. Sophie had fun playing with all of Matthew’s toys (although she didn’t really enjoy her time in the mini-ball pit!). Here’s a picture of the two of them.